


Benefit of the Touch

by Chrissy24601



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Asexuality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluffy Angst, Javert isn't used to touch, M/M, Nightmares, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Seine, angst fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 01:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1491370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrissy24601/pseuds/Chrissy24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“A body is a body, no matter how many layers of cloth between my skin and it. Taking hold of the fabric they wear is one thing, but to feel the shape of their bones and flesh beneath it…” He suppressed a shiver. “That I will only tolerate when I am the one in control of when, where and how long the touch lasts.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Fill for this prompt: Valvert pairing where one or both are asexual. Javert has a nightmare after the barricades and Valjean comforts him. Would love a fic with sharing a bed, awkward old virgin cuddling and comfort. Plus if it focuses on Javert being distrustful or even somewhat fearful of the human touch and gradually becoming able to enjoy it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Benefit of the Touch

 

The smell of gunpowder filled the cafe. Clouds of smoke and dust billowed in through the broken door. Unnaturally fast they engulfed him and poured down his throat like water. He coughed to clear his lungs. He tried to turn on his side, but while the ropes that bound him to the table he lay on were not tight, they were clammy and sticky. The heat that rose off of them made him shiver.

Over the noise of the battle that was raging outside, he heard the sound that drew his attention. He looked to his side. There, through the rising smoke, he saw the figure of a man.

Jean Valjean...

And Valjean reached out for him with a massive hand. Too late he, Javert, realised that the hand was holding a knife. He started, but a little voice in the back of his head told him not to be surprised. Of course Valjean was here. He had been here before, hadn’t he?

Hadn’t he?

Suddenly the knife had gone and Valjean sat in a chair beside the table; back hunched, chin on his chest, eyes closed. As if he were sleeping. Or dead.

Dead. _They told me none of the insurgents had survived!_ Dead then. Or...?

He wrestled his own hands free from the ropes and reached for the big, slumped shoulders. _Shake them, rouse the man!_ But he stopped short. He looked at his hands. Why the hesitation? He had gripped Valjean before! Yes, but that had been to arrest him...

_No. There was another time..._

A beach. A corpse in the sand, a ghost kneeling before him.

_‘It is I…’_

_‘Who?’_

_‘Jean Valjean’_

A silent shock jolted his body and made him tear his eyes open with a gasp. Valjean was still there, wide awake and closer than before. Possibly too close. Javert flinched when the man moved.

“Easy now. You are safe here, remember?” Valjean’s deep voice muttered.

Safe? Javert looked around and found a small and austere room instead of barricades or the cellar of the doomed cafe. Slowly memories surfaced of having seen it before. Never well, never long, but every time Valjean had been there beside him. As he was now.

“I remember,” Javert said at length. “But I do not remember how I got here. In this bed…” He closed his eyes when a wave of dizziness came over him and groped at the sheets for support they would not give.

“It was I who brought you here. After hauling you from the waters of the Seine, in fact.” Valjean regarded him with a guarded gaze. His words were measured. “You must have been overpowered by brigands and thrown in, because the parapets are too high to fall by accident and the only other explanation… Well, I would say that such a thing is inconceivable for a man of your character.”

Javert worked his jaw in silence. Warped and twisted as his mind had been and still was, that instance he remembered only too well. To deny what he had done to himself would be a lie, yet to confirm it… The look on Valjean's face told him that he did not need to. He sighed, which triggered a wet cough.

“Yes, it will take your lungs some time to clear the water that you swallowed. Though it is not nearly as bad as it could have been. But what I do find truly worrying is that you seem to have developed something of a fever.” He reached up and extended his hand toward Javert, who promptly shied away. “Javert, please cooperate.”

“I will not have you touch me!”

“Oh, come now,” Valjean admonished gently. “I know you do not trust me, but think of this: if I had intended to harm you, I have had ample opportunity to do so in the two days that you have been here.”

Javert glared at him. “Two days?” From what he recalled it could not have been more than a few hours. But then there had been the dreams… He swallowed hard as smoke and cries of dying men rose in his mind like the flames in the hearth that blazed at the far end of the room. Suddenly cold fingers brushed his face. With a snarl of a wounded animal he swatted them away.

“I gave you no permission,” he hissed at Valjean.

The older man frowned. “My apologies. Pray allow me, because I cannot feel whether or not your fever has gone down without touching you. At least let me take your pulse.”

“No, I will not allow. Not you.”

“I see. Would you rather have me call a doctor to examine you?”

“No!”

Valjean pursed his lips. “Then I'm afraid, inspector, that you must permit me regardless.” Without awaiting further protestations, the man got up from the chair and sat down on the edge of the bed. At the sight of the hand reaching for him, Javert leaned back as far as the narrow bed would allow. It was not far enough. As he attempted to put one more inch between Valjean himself, he lost his balance.

Instantly two strong hands grabbed him; one circling his arm and the other bracing his torso to keep him from falling out of the bed. Javert stiffened at the uninvited breach of this privacy. He never allowed others to touch him without his consent. _Never_. Any touch was at his instigation or not at all!

But then since when had Valjean heeded the sacred rules of other people?

On instinct he tried to wrest himself loose, but he gave up before long. His body was clearly weakened, and even in good health he was no match for Valjean's brutal strength. That meant he would have to endure the invasion, just as he could not avoid the unsolicited touch of people brushing by or pushing into him in a crowded street. Yes, he would endure it, though not without great reluctance.

“Why are you so tense?” Valjean said as he helped Javert sit up against the headboard. “You must have understood by now that I mean you no harm.” He gazed into Javert’s eyes. “Do you hate me so?”

Against his will, Javert recalled the unspeakable images he had seen while on that bridge; all of them compounding to the halo he had seen around this man's brow. He shook his head. He could not hate a good man, not even if a good man was _this_ man. God – yes, God! - knew that that was the reason why he, Javert, fell from grace.

“Then why?” Valjean raised his hand to Javert's face anew, but lowered it when Javert turned his head away. “Is the cold of my hands so uncomfortable? If that is the case, your condition is worse than I thought.” Eyes full of genuine concern studied Javert's. “Perhaps I should send for a doctor after all.”

“No, there is no need for that,” Javert snapped. “I could not care less if your hands were cold or warm. I just do not appreciate others touching me.”

He braced himself for another of Valjean's attempts, but instead the older man sat back and put his hands on his own lap.

“I have no ulterior motives, inspector, should that be your concern. It is meant as quick confirmation of your health, nothing more.”

“Of course that is how you meant it. Why else would you—Oh.” He carefully turned to look at Valjean. “By ‘ulterior’, you mean ‘lewd’. Am I right?”

Seeing Valjean’s embarrassed nod and understanding what it confirmed, Javert stared blankly at him while his addled mind ground to a halt. He knew about sexual activities, of course. He came across it all too often in the line of duty: whores, solicitation, rape, domestic violence involving sexual acts. He knew how it worked and that people would go to great length for it, but personally he had never seen the point. Sex never even crossed his mind if not as a part of a case he was investigating. The fear that Valjean suggested he felt was so absurd as to be ludicrous.

“To be honest I hadn’t even considered that possibility,” he said bluntly.

He expected Valjean to be relieved or even offended, but the man merely looked surprised. He bowed his white head in thoughtful deliberation, all the while making a point of keeping his folded hands to himself.

“Forgive me my curiosity, inspector,” he began, speaking slowly, “but if you do not question my intentions, or the medical necessity of confirming your condition, why do you resist so?”

“That is none of your business,” Javert hissed.

Valjean tilted his head. “Indeed it is not. However, I wish to help you, and I cannot if you will not let me.”

He did not have to answer. Javert knew that, but at the same time, he could not ignore the calm, penetrating gaze that had locked on him, either. In truth he did not know why he shunned the touch of others. It was such a fact of his life that he had never questioned it. But since he had met Valjean on the banks of the Seine, Javert had begun to doubt everything about himself. The convict turned saint had already stripped his soul bare, all its strengths and shortcomings brought to light. What did he stand to lose with being honest now?

“It is not personal,” Javert said eventually. “Do not ask me why, but I have never appreciated direct contact with another person's body.”

Valjean's mouth fell open. “But when you make an arrest—”

“—I grab them by their collar. Hadn't you noticed?” His thin lips pulled into a tired smirk. “Or I let my men do the physical wrestling, if such cannot be avoided.”

“Yet you wear no gloves.”

“A body is a body, no matter how many layers of cloth between my skin and it. Taking hold of the fabric they wear is one thing, but to feel the shape of their bones and flesh beneath it…” He suppressed a shiver. “That I will only tolerate when I am the one in control of when, where and how long the touch lasts.”

It was obvious that Valjean had a clear opinion of all this, but he did not voice it. Instead he said: “If I were to ask you to tolerate two of my fingers to your wrist for fifteen seconds, timed with an hourpiece, would you allow it?”

Javert gauged him. A test. He would not fail it. “If I must.”

“Please?”

“It is acceptable, I suppose.” He undid the two buttons of his shirt cuff and rolled the sleeve back. Then he extended his arm, placing it on the sheets near Valjean with his wrist turned up.

As promised, Valjean took his watch from the pocket of his waist coat and flipped it open. “Fifteen seconds,” he repeated before he gently pressed the promised two fingers just off-centre of Javert’s wrist, where the pulse is strongest.

Expected and accounted for, Javert found that the touch was not unpleasant. Valjean’s fingers were cool and rough, but they did not press harder than necessary or lingered after Javert had counted to fifteen.

Valjean flipped his watch shut and put it away as he muttered a calculation under his breath. “Your pulse is fast,” he concluded, “but that might well be the result of your discomfort with this subject.”

Javert scoffed a laugh. “Your curiosity is not yet satisfied?”

“I should like to make sure, yes.”

“Or is it that you enjoy forcing something on me that I do not want? A petty kind of revenge after all.”

Now the old man looked hurt. “Revenge would be tying you to the bed and forcing an examination on you without permission. But that is not what I have done.” He let out a weary sigh. “Believe it or not, I’m worried about you, inspector. I want to help you, see you well again. I cannot do that if I don’t know what is wrong with you!”

“And one thing will lead to another and then another, until you have turned me inside out after all. Give them a finger and they will take your whole arm!”

“A brief touch of your forehead will suffice, I promise.”

“No, Valjean,” Javert said. Another spell of dizziness hit him and he leaned his head against the board behind him. To his relief, Valjean did not push his point. Or not immediately, anyway.

“I find it hard to believe someone can be so adverse to touch when a kind touch is what reminds us that we are human.”

Javert snorted, eyes closed. “Says the man who all of Montreuil knew never let anyone near.”

“And I was wrong. Cosette taught me that. All the touches she had known in her young life were beatings. We were both scarred at first, but she taught me how an embrace can build trust, how a caress can give comfort.” He fell silent for a moment. “Javert? Didn’t your mother hold you when you were a little boy? Didn’t she brush her fingers over your brow when you were sick?”

Javert opened his eyes again. “No,” he said simply.

“No? You were an orphan?”

“Orphaned by my parents' criminal behaviour. I saw little of them, since they were both in prison. I survived infancy, so I assume someone must have nursed me as a babe, but I have no recollections of that. My earliest memories are of distant family who didn’t care about another brat, and then of the prison warden who decided to train me. None of them touched me, unless it was with a stick.”

He wondered at the agony that appeared on Valjean’s face. “Children _need_ a kind touch when they grow up. They need that confirmation that they are welcome, that they are loved.”

“One cannot miss what one has never had,” Javert shrugged. He winced when the movement made his head swim. “I have no experience with this form of affection you describe.”

“None at all?”

“No.”

“Not even later in life, from a wife or a lover?”

“No.”

“A sweetheart of _any_ kind?” Valjean sounded almost desperate, but all Javert felt was exasperation.

“Don’t bother asking. I never had any desire for such relationships.”

The older man raised a brow. “Why on Earth not?”

“Because they are all forged from lust, and I have seen people do the most depraved and unlawful things for lust. I decided long ago that I would have none of it.”

“To some degree you are right, I’m afraid, but there is more to relationships than mere lust. I never married, either, but I had Cosette.”

Now it was Javert’s turn to look perplexed. “You mean to say that you and she—”

“Never!” Valjean’s righteous indignation roared through the small room. The echoes were still bouncing off the wall when he lowered his head as well as his voice to continue. “I had no need for a wife, because the pure love that my daughter gave me was stronger than what a spouse might have meant to me. Yes, I held Cosette, but only as a parent would. I cradled her when she was little, cuddled and cherished her when she got older. Even now the touch of her hand on my arm when we walk in the park…” He looked down, then shrugged as if to rid himself of a tormenting thought. “What I meant to say is that the simple act of touching the limbs of another can create a bond between people. For years Cosette had that bond with me, and soon she will create such a bond with her husband instead. It is natural.”

But Javert shook his head, shuddering. “There is nothing natural about it!” he sneered. “Humans are vile creatures, capable of terrible things if they are given a chance. We are both evidence of that!”

“So you have said before, but I feel you are mistaken.”

Javert shuddered, recalling those terrible considerations on the bridge. “Maybe I am,” he muttered. “But even if you are right, I have no desire to ‘create a bond’, as you put it. They are not worthy of such trust. And I am not worthy of theirs.”

Valjean casually moved one of his hands from his lap to the sheets. “Are you so sure of that?” he asked in the softest of tones. “You are one of the most honourable men I have met in my life. Yes, you are too harsh on yourself and too strict with others, but you are above all an honest man.”

“If you mean to convince me that I can be trusted, then spare your breath. I know my place… The brat of criminals, born in prison and raised for the gutter. An outcast from the start, only welcomed by others insofar that I am useful to them.”

“A harsh existence.”

“Justly so,” Javert said. “Then when I ceased to be of use, it was only logical that I should end that existence.”

“That would be a waste.”

He glared at Valjean. “Is that why you pulled me out of the water?”

“Would you have jumped if there had been a wife who was waiting for you, or perhaps a child?”

“I do not—“

“Or would you have turned to them for shelter from the storm that drove you to that bridge?”

Javert stared in bewilderment. How could he answer a question he could not even comprehend? If he had had a family, would he have relied on them? Possibly. Most likely not. But who was to say?

In his confusion, Javert noticed too late that Valjean had moved. Suddenly a big, calloused hand rested lightly on his forearm. His instinct was to pull his arm away, but while he tensed, he did not move. The touch was too tentative to be demanding. Mostly people touched him because they wanted something from him. This, however, was different. And like the two fingers on his wrist, it was not wholly unpleasant.

To his surprise, that did not change when the weight of Valjean’s hand slowly increased and the sensation became more tangible.

“Thank you,” Valjean whispered. He smiled. “Thank you that you allow this. That you allow me, of all people, to come so close.”

Javert scoffed with derision. “What do I stand to lose? You already destroyed the very foundations of my world. I'm falling, plagued by nightmares of fire and brimstone, only to find that it is you who denied - or prevented, I cannot be sure - those nightmares to become my soul’s reality.” He grimaced. With every shallow breath he felt his will to resist these facts ebb away. “By all means… Do what you must. There's nothing you can take that you haven't already.”

“I never meant to take anything from you, Javert. I spared your life to save it, because you deserve to live. If what you say is true, if I in some way caused or contributed to this need to destroy yourself, will you allow me to make amends?”

In Javert’s memory, ever single kindness that Valjean had bestowed on him had come at a terrible price. On the other hand, since he had been willing to pay the ultimate price of his own volition, what risk was there in accepting one more poisonous gift?

Evidently Valjean took the prolonged silence as an affirmation and slowly slid his hand up Javert's arm. Javert watched the movement like a hawk, but found that the careful touch was void of intent. It was neither a medical examination nor a prelude to a sexual act - at least, it bore no resemblance to what some prostitutes would do to make him change his mind about arresting them. As best he could tell, the touch had no other intention then to just… _be_ there. That sensation was utterly new to him.

Soon Valjean's hand rested on his shoulder, where it stopped. Javert glanced at it, bemused by how inoffensive it felt to have it there. As he watched the strong fingers curl a fraction, and where they touched him, he felt the pressure on his skin increase. The fingers relaxed, moved a fraction closer to his neck and then curled again, this time pressing a little harder against his sore muscles. He gasped. The fingers relaxed, moved and curled again. And again, and again…

At each repetition Javert moaned softly. The first moans were drawn by the novelty of being touched like this; then two by the dull pain of a particularly tense spot; and finally Javert moaned for a reason he could not possibly put into words. Yet Valjean continued his careful ministration, and before long, the moans turned into sobs. Javert pressed his hands to his heated face to hide the sudden tears that came to his eyes.

“Shhhh,” Valjean hushed, never stopping the gentle movement of his fingers. “It is all right… That is what comfort is for.”

“To break a man?” Javert spat for shame.

“Oh, no,” said Valjean as he made Javert lower his hands. “Comfort shelters an already broken man, so he can shed his tears in safety.”

Javert choked without suffocating. To his own surprise his tears blinded his sight and the sobs deafened his hearing. His most used, most trusted senses deserted him, leaving him all the more aware of the one sense he had shunned all his life.

Indeed, the price to be paid for Valjean's kindness was terrible. In a last chance to rebel he pulled his knees up and curled in on himself, but Valjean was quicker. Javert felt two thick arms wrap around his chest and shoulders. They pulled him against the soft, clothed, _living_ wall that was Valjean’s body. A habit of a lifetime made him rebuke the notion, but another, far more primal part of him leaned closer and buried his face in Valjean’s shoulder.

Wave upon wave of tension, grief and emotions he could not name crashed through him. The shield he had hidden them behind had first cracked under Valjean’s mercy, and now shattered at the man’s touch. A cool hand cupped his neck and strummed base of his skull while another stroked his back. In that lulling rhythm, Javert saw images of his past come and go before his mind’s eye like teeming fish that tried to escape the storm he was caught in. They could not escape, and neither could he. In truth, he wasn’t sure anymore if he wanted to.

The storm raged for hours, days, possibly centuries, but at long last it died down. When Javert opened his burning eyes and found that he could see again, he was not sure of what he saw. He lay on his side, facing a mountain of linen. His head rested on something that was too hard to be a pillow, but too soft to be wood. It moved ever so slightly beneath him. He started.

“Shh, rest,” rumbled a deep voice by his brow. “You cried yourself into exhaustion.”

Javert still tried to raise his head, only to feel cool lips to his temple, pressing gently in a wordless encouragement to keep still. He did. He didn’t know why, but he lay as he was. Even when he became aware of the broad body beside him, the arm under his head and the hand stroking his side through the blankets that covered him, Javert could not summon the strength to fight them.

Perhaps, his hazy mind supplied, there was no need to. Lying here in Valjean’s embrace, he was warm and, in some strange way, more comfortable than he had been all his life. He had never believed that such a thing was possible. He had never understood why people sought comfort with each other in whatever way. Proximity and intimacy corrupted. Or so he had thought.

The old convict cradled him, closer and longer than anything Javert had experienced before. The big hand left his side to stroke his face. Yet Javert felt cleansed rather than defiled. How unexpected. And how fragile…

“I dreamt that you had died on the barricade,” Javert muttered as weariness overruled discretion.

Valjean nuzzled his hair. “I’m still here.”

“Yes…” Javert let his fingers runs through the folds of the shirt before his eyes. It was softer than he had imagined. Through the fabric, he felt the ridges of Valjean’s muscles, his ribs, and the number. “I am glad that you are…”

The arms around him tightened a fraction. “It was just a dream,” Valjean whispered against his temple. “Sleep now. I will be here when you wake. I promise.”

Weighed down by the drowsiness of sleep, Javert was only marginally aware of how Valjean drew him closer still. He did not mind. The feeling of the man’s heartbeat against his cheek was more reassuring than the emptiness of supposed self-protection had ever been.

 


End file.
